Family & Friends

For those of you who don’t know who Corey Worthington is, he is notorious for throwing a massive, uncontrolled party at his parents house while they were on holiday. He advertised it to all-comers on Myspace and over 500 people showed up. The party quickly degenerated into mayhem; there was over $20,000 in damages and police called in helicopters.

Afterwards, Corey was famously unrepentant, offering to organise parties for anyone who asked on national television.

You can find out more about Corey at The Age, Crikey, YouTube and many other places.

My brother decided Corey was an appropriate person to dress up as at a recent party. For your reference, Corey looks like this:

Here’s my brother in action:

(Photo credit: PopMatters)

You’ve probably already heard about this - the buzz surrounding this film is just unbelievable - but my brother Ben’s short film “Bees In The Bath”, a heartwarming tale of a father and son who discover - wait for it - bees in their bathtub - is coming out on a limited cinema release!

I can’t wait for the sequel, tentatively titled “Son Of Bees In The Bath” at this stage. Just so long as it doesn’t suffer from the inevitable rush of copycat films, such as “Bee Movie” and “Bees On A Plane”, that are already being planned by studios.

You have just one chance to see “Bees In The Bath” - this Sunday 7.30pm at the Astor Theatre, cnr Chapel St and Princes Hwy, Windsor. It’s part of “Visionnaire”, a whole bunch of short films done by Deakin visual arts students.

Tickets available on the night. Cost is $10.

If you see only one film this year about bees in a bath, make it this one!

To reiterate:

“Bees In The Bath” (part of “Visionnaire” or something)
Astor Theatre
November 11, 7.30pm
Tickets $10

(NB. While there are other short films being shown in the same session, this is the only one about bees in baths. I think.)

I met my sister and parents recently and we did a tour of Albury, Beechworth and the surrounding areas. This mainly involved a lot of eating and drinking, including, but not limited to, five types of wine and four varieties of beer, plus coffee to excess.

The coffee highlight was definitely the Electra Cafe in Albury. You can see why:

My dad was particularly impressed.

Hubert recently announced he was throwing a birthday party for his dog. That raised lots of questions. Yes, he was going to invite other dogs. No, the dogs wouldn’t have to RSVP. Yes, there will be a cake. A dog food cake.

Etc.

Hubert is a tad odd, but I don’t think anyone expected him to actually throw this party, so I was surprised when Marjorie was given an invitation. I was invited too, at the last minute.

The party was surprisingly normal; it was a barbeque at a local park. Three dogs made it to the party, along with their human assistants and hangers-on. Lots of food was eaten, and then there was the cake.

Looks tasty, doesn’t it?

Hubert cut it like a normal cake and served it to the dogs. They didn’t eat it, instead preferring the barbeque meat, the spoiled things.

Hubert also owns a cat. If he ever throws a party for it, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Just in case you weren’t aware that our family is weird, I present here the definitive proof. These images were created one morning several years ago by brother Ben, who now has a blog.

You remember, of course, my previous discussion on this subject. It is now the case that I have had a fake girlfriend, but for a different reason. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I walked into church with a girl of my acquaintance and sat with her and other friends during the service. Quite innocent, no? A few days later I received a text message informing me of a rumour going around that Denese and I were going out. Doesn’t take much, does it?

I could easily have quashed the rumour by spreading The Truth. But what fun would that be? Denese and I, who both found the rumour hilarious, decided to take a different approach. Namely, to ensure that the rumour would spread.

Doing this was almost too easy. All I did was hold her hand during the service for a few seconds at a time when certain other people were watching. That, and occasionally putting my arm around her. After the service, we walked out arm in arm.

That was it. We didn’t kiss, or anything similar. But I could tell from the looks I was getting that people were convinced.

That was the beginning. It was to go further. Much further. The fake relationship took on a momentum of its own. I’ll post the details over the coming days, but in the meantime I’ll simply let this post be my confession that our relationship was fake and the girlfriend was not a girlfriend.

In the meantime, I’ll let you enjoy this pic:

My brother is behind such endeavours as Save The Mexican Wave (which earned a mention in Wikipedia), Newton Clothiers and Jonk’s Bargains. You’d think, with those projects behind him, blogging would be a cinch. Unfortunately not.

For starters, he is lazy. In a recent post (since updated), he didn’t even bother posting a link to what he was posting about, instead telling his readers to “Google it”. That is the peak of blogging laziness.

More recently, he stated he can’t figure out how to make archive pages work on his blog, which is a Wordpress blog. His problem? The theme his blog uses is not compatible with widgets. But that isn’t the half of it.

He told me, “I can’t figure out how to do an About page”. You already have an about page, I inform him. “What!? Where?” is his astonished response. So I showed him.

Exercise for the reader: go to the front page of his blog and see if you can find the About page. No, it’s still in the same place it was before.

“But how do I make a page?” Simple, dear boy. Hit the Write button and – “but I already know how to do that” (he says as Wordpress loads a blank post) – there’s a Write Page button right there!

“Oooooh.”

The silly sod can’t manage plugins, themes or anything else. I’ll be helping him out though. So far, I’ve upgraded him to Wordpress version 2.2 (with the Automatic Upgrade plugin), plus I’ve installed the One Click Installer (the plugin that installs plugins!) (Not a joke.) (Really.)

Good thing his content is often interesting. Check out the posts on the Christian candidate for the Greens party, Are we all just Sims characters in a giant simulation?, What are you number one for? and Internet marketing scams.

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You may have noticed I am not blogging quite so often as of late. The reason why is simple: my new job.

My new job is quite different to the old one. No waking up at 4am, no stinky co-workers, and the fact that I actually have to work at work. (As opposed to doing 10 minutes of work in a seven hour shift. I was well paid for it, too.)

I quite like my new job, but it means I can’t have a post up every day like I used to. Still, I should manage around three posts a week. That ain’t too bad.

These two photos were taken about 5 minutes apart:

That isn’t what it looks like, I swear.

When in China, do as the Chinese do:

Those pictured are my brothers, during their recent trip to China, Mongolia and Hong Kong. One of them has created a website about their experiences. It’s very interesting and has some great photos as well.

UPDATE: The scorpion tasted just like pork crackling, apparently. They couldn’t make out what the snake tasted like as it was smothered in fish sauce.

(This post is my contribution to the latest group writing project at Middle Zone Musings. To participate, simply write a post entitled “What I Learned From …” that has something to do with travel. I wasn’t going to contribute at first since I haven’t travelled much. Guess I just can’t help myself.)

I went to Thailand as part of a group of eight. We spent much of our time teaching English at university campuses in Bangkok. It was my first and only trip overseas since the age of three; definitely an eye-opening experience in many ways. I think I learned as much about myself as I did about the culture!

1. Some people are wimps *

When travelling overseas, you have to deal with things that you are not accustomed to, and this trip was no exception. We had to endure cold showers for the majority of the trip, plus the food was different obviously. Overall though, what we had to put up with was pretty minor, certainly not worth complaining about.

So I was astonished when certain members of the group kept whining about the showers and the food! You would think they had been asked to hike the Kokoda Trail or something. We must have gone to McDonald’s at least a dozen times to get “Australian food” (ha!)

I could understand this if the food was disgusting or very weird, but it was very good on the whole. There were incidents of food poisoning however. Half the team got sick at one point or another. Not me, though, despite eating roadside crab against my sister’s objections.

2. It is possible to wear only one pair of underpants for two weeks

This isn’t as disgusting as you might think. We didn’t have access to a laundry most of the time, so we handwashed our clothes instead, putting them up overnight to dry. This worked pretty well.

Towards the end of my trip, my roommate revealed that he had only worn one pair of underpants for the entire trip. Each night he would handwash them, put them out to dry, then put them back on the next day.

This wasn’t out of necessity either; he had brought 16 pairs with him from Australia.

3. Travelling with a group can bring out personality traits you didn’t know you had

If you are like me (God help you!), you tend to be blind to your own weaknesses at times.

Spending an extended period of time with a small group of people in unfamiliar territory can be a recipe for conflict. Our group was warned before leaving Australia to be aware of this. The eight of us were quite diverse, with several strong-willed personalities. I assumed it would be other members of the group getting aggro with each other while I was on the sidelines. Instead it was me in the thick of it all.

Without going into too much detail, I learned I had abrasive personality traits I didn’t know were abrasive. I didn’t understand at the time why the rest of the team reacted the way they did. Only later did I pick up on it.

Fortunately there wasn’t much damage done. Several rounds of apologies had to be made, but we were able to continue working together as a team.

4. Dealing with a different culture is tricky

While we were only in Thailand for two weeks, we nevertheless experienced a degree of culture shock and homesickness as we attempted to navigate a culture that was alien to us. Everything was different; mannerisms, language, body language, customs, religious beliefs, food, rules and laws, standards of behaviour etc. As Australians, we stuck out like a sore thumb.

Surely there are few things harder than moving to a country with a vastly different culture.

5. People are people everywhere

Despite cultural differences, we have many things in common. The basic needs and desires of people are the same everywhere. For me, to go to a local church and see people in a completely different part of the world worshipping the same God that I do was an emotionally overpowering experience.

That’s it from me. Join the project, or relate your own experiences by leaving a comment.

* Edited so it won’t look like I’m having a go at Robert Hruzek, self-confessed meat-and-potatoes man. He’s from Texas, if that’s relevant. Dare say he wouldn’t like scorpions on a stick.